"Generally dairy conversions have slowed down. It is important to also note that a significant number of these consents have consisted of one or several paddocks being converted as opposed to whole farms. The proportion of land converted to dairy in our region is really small – in most of our catchments it's less than one per cent of land."

In Southland, conversions were at their highest in 2014 with 35 consents granted but this year they had plummeted to only two.

Canterbury's big growth year was in 2011-12 when 110 new dairy effluent consents were issued; by this year they had dropped to 20.